1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to timepieces, specifically to an improved design for clocks and watches to be used by children and mentally-disadvantaged individuals.
2. Description of Problem
The representation, measurement, and communication of time are central to our everyday life. Until recent years, most time has been recorded by analog timepieces, which are traditional devices with minute and hour hands that move in a clockwise direction around a circular face. The analog clock is a legacy of history and represents the available technology at the time, rather than a principled device that was designed to convey time in a rational manner. The analog clock is thus an arbitrary, but standardized device, that must be learned and mastered. Therefore, one of the most important skills acquired in the first years of schooling is the ability to tell time. However, it is wellknown that children have great difficulty in learning to tell time, especially analog time. Even after children are able to tell time, several years of experience are necessary before time-telling becomes an easy and automatic act. Furthermore, some mentally-disadvantaged individuals never learn to tell analog time or always have great difficulty telling the time from an analog clock.
Time-telling remains a hurdle for children primarily because the traditional analog clock is poorly designed and little effort has been directed at improving the design of analog timepieces. In fact, the modern clocks and watches being sold and used have, for the most part, sacrificed functional design for the sake of style. The marketplace is being flooded with clocks and watches with no or few numbers, with upside down numbers, or with irrelevant artistic drawings that impede the process of telling time.
Digital timepieces, which give a direct indication of the time, were introduced in this century. Digital timepieces are easy to read and reduce the time and effort required for learning. The representation of time on a digital timepiece is identical to the representation of time in writing. Advances in the technology of electronics during the 1970's made these watches as affordable as analog timepieces. When a mother leaves a note for her child to be home for dinner at six fifteen, she writes the time as 6:15. She does not draw an analog clock with the hour hand on the six and the minute hand on the three. If the child knows how to read the representation of time in writing, then he or she essentially knows how to tell time on a digital timepiece. Digital time is easier to read because merely knowing the names of the appropriate digits and the separation function of the colon are the only skills needed. The child does not need to know how to map the hands of the analog timepiece into hours and minutes. Given the availability and use of digital timepieces, many children do not master the telling of analog time until after adolescence.